Home-country specific advantages and foreign investment of Russian oil and gas companies: a network approach

Jonas Grätz

International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development, 2013, vol. 6, issue 1/2, 62-87

Abstract: This paper uses a social network approach to explain the diverging access to home-country specific advantages and the propensity to engage in resource-seeking internationalisation. The density of social networks between firm elites and political elites is used as an explanation for the type of outward foreign direct investment by Russia's largest foreign investors - firms from the oil and gas industries. The social network analysis is based on an original biographical dataset. It is found that densely networked firms have access to home-country specific advantages and show no particular propensity to engage in resource-seeking internationalisation. On the contrary, firms with loose networks have lesser access to those advantages and are 'pushed' to engage in resource-seeking internationalisation. The findings suggest that it is useful to distinguish different types of home-country specific advantages according to their degree of rivalry and excludability. The network approach is specifically relevant for excludable, rival consumption goods, if a stable institutional framework is absent. The findings also suggest that better institutionalisation of the state-business relationship would improve the performance of the Russian oil and gas industries.

Keywords: outward FDI; BRIC countries; oil and gas industry; natural resources; social network analysis; internationalisation; TNC; institutions; home-country advantages; foreign direct investment; economic development; Russia; social networks; state-business relationship. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=51698 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijtlid:v:6:y:2013:i:1/2:p:62-87

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().